School of Cool: Dover Street Market Debuts Its Own-Brand Collection by Kei Ninomiya

The top floor showroom above Dover Street Market’s new-ish Paris outpost was all action last Sunday morning as buyers browsed the retailer’s roster of incubator brands including ERL, Rassvelt, and Phileo. Alongside them sat an entirely new label, whose name also happened to be on the door: for the first time since its founding in 2004, Dover Street Market was launching an own-brand fashion collection.

The “DSM brand,” as it was referred to when announced by the retailer’s co-founder Adrian Joffe last month, is designed by Kei Ninomiya. His imaginatively innovative Noir label has been part of the Commes des Garçons / Dover Street Market diaspora for a decade.

Ninomiya, signature mohawk in fine form, was in the showroom to talk through the debut. He said: “This is completely different to Noir. It’s an original brand from Dover Street Market. So I wanted to think about its philosophy, identity, and DNA. In DSM there are many kinds of brands and many kinds of people, from many nationalities and places from all over the world. It’s a community—kind of a team with no name. So I wanted to make clothes for them.”

The result is a collection that riffs on the worn codes of educational institutions to signify membership of DSM’s global sorority of style and fraternity of fashion. Poly-jersey jackets in maroon and black were cut like oversized collarless school blazers and stitched with the outline of crests. One variation included a built-in hood and the actual crest, whose mantled escutcheon features the elephant installed in DSM’s Ginza outpost by Gucci in 2015, that signified the central theme of the collection.

Said elephant also featured on ‘DSMU’ team sweats, track pants, t-shirts, socks, and stadium jackets. School ties, knit collegiate cardigans and sweaters, pleated skirts, and some fun jersey duffle coats produced in collaboration with OG duffle-maker Gloverall completed the list of DSM’s new term uniform essentials.

As well as going on sale in Dover Street Market’s global portfolio of fashion campuses, the collection is being offered at wholesale in cities where, as yet, DSM has not established itself. The lookbook, which was still in the making during our appointment, features a cast of models that includes members of DSM’s retail staff and extended faculty of friends, including Carla Sozzani, ASAP Nast, Olivier Saillard, and Jean-Baptiste Talbourdet-Napoleone.

This was just the first day of term for DSM’s own brand. Its design will continue to be overseen by Ninomiya during the seasons to come, yet there is also talk of its extension to encompass collaborative contributions from other names and brands across categories beyond this starting point—so pay attention in class!